Using striping apparatus on a circular knitting machine is a technique known in the art. The circular knitting machine that adopts the striping apparatus, depending on their functional and structural differences, will have changes on installation. Based on this perspective, the striping apparatus can generally be divided into vertical type and horizontal type. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 6,655,176 entitled “Striping apparatus for a circular knitting machine” and No. 5,070,709 entitled “Striping system for circular knitting machine” disclose respectively a vertical striping apparatus to feed different colored yarns into a knitting machine, while U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,845 entitled “Circular knitting machine striper control system” and No. 7,036,343 entitled “Striping apparatus of a circular knitting machine” disclose respectively a horizontal striping apparatus and a controller used on a knitting machine.
However, either the vertical or horizontal striping apparatus in the prior techniques still have flaws on their yarn clipping and cutting structure, notably:
1. They have a yarn picking portion on a yarn clipping and cutting drive blade and a yarn clipping blade with respectively an edge angle formed thereon that is prone to rupture colored yarns during yarn clipping operation, and after a yarn cutoff operation is finished by a yarn cutting blade at another side a small section of yarn debris is formed that is subsequently released by the yarn picking portion and drops, and easily being carried to the knitting fabric with knitting operation, and could affect fabric quality.
2. Moreover, the conventional yarn clipping structure does not provide colored yarn buffer design. In the event that the colored yarn is ruptured during the yarn clipping operation yarn dropping caused by insecure yarn clipping frequently takes place in the high speed operation of the striping apparatus.